Thoughts on social media, business and journalism from Suw and Kevin Charman-Anderson

Last year, a university journalism classmate of mine and I were talking the various plights of journalism, and he told me some advice that a business-savvy relative had given him. Roughly, it was this:

To be successful, you have to know how to create value but also how to capture value.

Basically, this means, that yes, you have to create value. Many journalists are focused on this part of the equation, the valuable service that we provide and the social value that we create. However, to be a sustainable business, we also have to know how to capture value. From that service or social value that journalists create, how do we get a return on it so that we can continue to provide the service? This is really the pressing business issue for digital content businesses, including journalism. How do we capture the value of the service that we provide? Subscriptions? Advertising? Events? Consulting? Marketing services? Most likely all of the above and more.

It’s worth interrogating the first part of that and being pretty ruthless and honest with ourselves as journalists about what value we are creating. There is a lot of redundant content out there right now, and as I said over and over in 2011, content is abundant; attention is scarce. Metered paywalls such as those at the Financial Times and the New York Times seem to be working. Is it because of the metre or the content (or a bit of both)? Adam Tinworth has a view on that:

I was involved in a significant amount of work in my final year at RBI looking at exactly what kinds of content people will pay for, through what mechanism, and how to create more of it. Uniqueness was certainly one key factor – as was the amount of business value that investment returns to the reader, which is exactly why the FT does so well.

Adam was responding to Frédéric Filloux’s most recent Monday Note looking at how both the Financial Times and the New York Times are increasing the cost of their printed product, which makes their paid digital product seem less expensive by comparison for loyal readers. Filloux also keyed in on unique content:

Of these three factors, the uniqueness of content remains the most potent one. With the inflation of aggregators and of social reading habits, the natural replication of information has turned into an overwhelming flood. Then, the production of specific content — and its protection — becomes a key element in building value.

To me unique content and a strong, active social media strategy builds audience and engagement. Note that I said an active social media strategy. The only thing that has continued to propel my career forward has been a personal active social media strategy, engaging my peers and also my audiences. This isn’t just about promoting myself or my content via social media but also connecting with people and connecting those people with information that I think they will find useful, whether I reported and wrote it or not.

Share this:

Like this:

Related

Write Your Own Social Media Strategy

A step-by-step guide to creating your own tailor-made social media strategy for marketing and outreach, featuring 50 lectures and 3 hours of video for just $349 (~£230). Sign up now to get lifetime access, and be safe in the knowledge that there's a 30 day money back guarantee!

Search

Subscribe to Strange Attractor via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 64 other subscribers

Email Address

About Us

Suw Charman-Anderson

With a decade of social media experience, it’s fair to say that Suw is one of the UK’s social media pioneers. She has worked with many household names, helping clients worldwide use social tools for collaboration and communication internally and to build customer relationships externally. She has a comprehensive understanding of strategy and implementation, with a depth of experience that is very hard to find in such a young field of expertise.

Suw writes fiction, available only via her monthly newsletter, and is fascinated by crafts such as bookbinding, goldwork embroidery and bobbin lace. Chocolate and Vodka is her personal blog where she writes about writing and any $random_subjects that catch her eye. And yes, she's married to Kevin.

Kevin Anderson

Kevin brings almost 20 years of cutting edge journalism experience to his work. He is currently a regional executive editor for Gannett Wisconsin Media, overseeing two newsrooms, the Sheboygan Press and HTR Media.

Before joining Gannett, he held a number of pioneering positions with news organizations. In 1998, he became the BBC’s first online journalist based outside of the UK, covering the US for its award winning news website. In 2005, he went to London for the BBC where he developed a blogging strategy for BBC News, served on a corporate-wide blog and podcast steering committee, helped launch a program on BBC 5Live covering weblogs and podcasts and was on the team that launched the interactive radio program World Have Your Say on the BBC World Service.

From 2006 to 2010, he worked at The Guardian as its first blogs editor and then as its digital research editor. While blogs editor, he launched a culture blogs network, a successful food blog and an environmental blog network that incorporated both Guardian and independent content. As digital research editor, he was responsible for monitoring key developments in digital media and evaluating their value to Guardian journalists and audiences.

From June 2012 through July 2013, Kevin was a member of the management team of the Media Development Investment Fund and editor of the Fund's Knowledge Bridge site and newsletter. The Media Development Investment Fund invests in independent news organizations in emerging democracies, and the Knowledge Bridge project is designed to help these news organizations make the digital transition.

From 2010 until he joined MDIF in 2012, he worked as a freelance journalist, digital media consultant and digital journalism trainer working with news organizations including Al Jazeera, Reed Business Information, Czech TV and CNN International.